


two steps forward (how many back?)

by renecdote



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dick gets a cameo too but not enough to tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Tim Drake is Robin, bruce is trying to dad, he's maybe not so good at it yet but he's trying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24016294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: He’s not worried, not exactly, just… curious. Tim’s whereabouts are a puzzle and he wants to solve it, that’s all. Alfred smiles a little into the dough he’s kneading when Bruce asks if he knows where Tim is, though, like he’s pleased that Bruce is taking an interest.(It has been made abundantly clear to Bruce in the last few months that taking an interest in the latest Robin is something he should be doing more of.)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 300





	two steps forward (how many back?)

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a short little fill for a tumblr prompt and became a monster of (mostly) angsty feelings whoops. 
> 
> Original prompt was: “I wasn’t a good kid. Don’t you dare use me as an example.”

It takes Bruce two hours to realise that Tim has disappeared. He checks the cave first, thinking the newest Robin must have finished his homework and snuck down there to practice the kick Bruce critiqued him on after their short patrol last night. Tim is good like that, dedicated, always throwing himself into perfecting his training.

But not this evening apparently. He’s not on the mats in the Cave or using any of the gym equipment. He’s not working on a case or studying in the library or… anywhere, it seems. Bruce even checks a few of the spare bedrooms on the second floor, thinking that maybe Tim looked a little tired today and he might have finished homework and training then gone to have a nap so he’s fresh for patrol. 

No luck there either.

Bruce makes his way to the kitchen to ask Alfred. He’s not worried, not exactly, just… curious. Tim’s whereabouts are a puzzle and he wants to solve it, that’s all. Alfred smiles a little into the dough he’s kneading when Bruce asks if he knows where Tim is, though, like he’s pleased that Bruce is taking an interest.

(It has been made abundantly clear to Bruce in the last few months that taking an interest in the latest Robin is something he should be doing more of.)

“Timothy has gone home,” Alfred informs him. The look he casts out the window at the dark grey sky is almost worried. “I invited him to join us for tea, but he said he couldn’t tonight. I’m sure he’ll be back in time for patrol.”

Tim has gone home? Bruce frowns. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to him.

“His parents are in Egypt,” he says. Tim didn’t tell him that. It seems clear now that Tim didn’t tell anyone that. If Alfred knew Tim was going home to an empty house, he would never have let him leave the manor. 

Bruce turns on his heel and heads toward the front door. “Where is my coat?” he asks over his shoulder. Then, before Alfred can reply, “Never mind, I’ll find it.”

“Master Bruce—Master Bruce, where on earth are you going?”

“Make enough pizza for three!” Bruce yells back. He grabs the first coat he finds in the cloakroom and lets the heavy front door slam behind him.

***

“You really didn’t need to come over,” Tim says. “Really, Bruce, I’m fine on my own. You don’t have to—to feel responsible for me or anything.”

Bruce ignores it, just as he has the last five or six times some variation of those words have come out of Tim’s mouth. He keeps his hand firm on one skinny shoulder and steers Tim up the front steps to the manor, glossy from the rain that is coming down in a steady drizzle now. 

“I’m sure Alfred already has the pizzas in the oven, dinner won’t be long. Go wash up then join us in the dining room.”

Instructions—he’s good at instructions. 

“I could have ordered pizza for dinner myself,” Tim mutters.

Bruce ignores that too. 

Tim goes to wash up.

Alfred looks as straight-faced as ever when Bruce enters the kitchen, but he thinks it’s an approving sort of straight-faced. Something in the crinkles around his eyes, maybe, or the cant of his head.

“I take it your mission was successful?” he asks lightly.

_There weren’t even any lights on,_ Bruce wants to say. _What kind of parents leave their child in a big house, any house, all alone? What kind of child thinks it’s okay to be left home alone for weeks or months or—_

_I didn’t even notice him leave_ , he can’t bring himself to say. 

“Yes,” he says. “And I told him he can stay over tonight—any night.”

Alfred nods. Definitely approving. “I’ll see to it that a bed is made up.”

He pats Bruce’s arm on the way to the oven and Bruce knows that he’s done something right.

***

Dinner is quiet. Uneventful. When it’s over, Alfred whisks Tim away to show him which guest room has been made up, chatter about homework floating back through the halls until even that fades away. Bruce sits at the empty dining table for a long moment before retreating to his study.

He thinks about calling Dick. Thinks so hard about it that Dick must get some kind of telepathic message because Bruce’s phone rings not fifteen minutes later and Dick’s cheery voice sounds back at him. It’s mostly the kind of meaningless chatter that Bruce can keep up with without much conscious thought, but when Dick gets through asking about him and Alfred and asks “ _how’s Tim?_ ” Bruce’s mouth stops working halfway through his automatic reply of “good”.

“ _Bruce?_ ” And now Dick sounds concerned.

Bruce sighs. “He’s not _not_ good,” he says, wincing at the clumsiness before he’s even finished. 

At this point it’s not really a surprise that Dick’s voice drops into a sharp question of, “ _What did you do?_ ”

Nothing. But he finds himself tripping over the answer before it leaves his mouse because… well, because that’s the problem, isn’t it? 

“This was so much easier with you,” Bruce admits. “You were such a good kid. I always… I always knew what to do with you.”

It’s not strictly speaking true. It is, in fact, dangerously close to being a bald-faced lie. But it had felt like that, by the end.

“ _I wasn’t always a good kid_ ,” Dick says. There’s a pause and Bruce feels the silence the way he used to, when he would work in the study and Dick would sit there quietly doing homework on one corner of the desk. There would be a question sometimes, about mathematical formulas or geographical formations or one historical figure or another, and eventually Dick would get bored and the peace would be broken, but it was never unpleasant.

“ _You want some advice? Don’t… don’t use me as some kind of unattainable example. I promise you Tim is putting too much pressure on himself, he doesn’t need you to do it too._ ”

Bruce grunts. He wants to argue that he doesn’t, that if he is putting pressure on Tim, it’s just the right amount. Robin isn’t an easy job. It takes discipline, skill, training. All the things Tim Drake didn’t have before he threw on the closest costume and set out to rescue Batman and Nightwing from Scarecrow all those months ago.

Okay, so maybe he does put pressure on the kid. But no more than he put on Dick or… or Jason.

Right?

“ _He’s just a kid, B. Just… maybe try treating him like one every now and then, yeah?_ ”

It sounds so simple when Dick says it.

***

Jason had the most awful nightmares when he first moved into the manor. Not awful the way Dick’s were awful—bloody and real, waking him up screaming and sobbing—but awful for _Bruce_ because they were so quiet. He thrashed sometimes, whimpered, but mostly he was still, tears silent if they came. He never woke Bruce up. For the longest time, Bruce never even realised he had such bad dreams.

Maybe that’s why he finds himself pausing outside Tim’s door long after they’ve returned from patrol and fallen into bed. Bruce had gone to bed himself, had even closed his eyes, got right to the edge of sleep before something pulled him back. An indefinable kind of something that threatens to choke him if he thinks about it too much. 

He doesn’t know how long he stands in the hallway with the door cracked before the mountain of blankets on the bed gives a huge sigh and Tim sits up. “You know that’s creepy, right?” he says. “Watching people sleep.”

The bolt of feeling that wriggles through Bruce’s chest at being caught is close to but not quite guilt. “Sorry,” he offers, letting the door fall open wider. Wide enough that he could step inside, but he doesn’t. 

Tim pulls his knees up to his chest, playing with the edge of a soft red blanket. “’S fine. Wasn’t really sleeping anyway.”

Bruce hesitates. If it were Dick, that would be an invitation to come in, but dark hair and blue eyes aside, this boy is nothing like Dick. Bruce is abundantly, terrifyingly, aware of that. 

“You have school tomorrow,” he says, which is the stupidest non sequitur ever, somewhere between parenting and chastising and—hell, Bruce doesn’t even know, but it’s out there now, he can’t take it back, so he may as well see where it takes him. “You should get some rest; wouldn’t want to be tired in class.”

“Right.”

Tim’s voice is neutral. Bruce tries to read it as disappointment, irritation, resignation—anything—but stumbles against how much he doesn’t know about this kid. He’s better at blocking than dodging, he still falters when kicking with his non-dominant leg, he relies too much on sight for situational awareness, he has a natural affinity for picking out patterns. All stuff that is good to know about a partner, but can only amount to a thin shell of who Tim Drake really is. He likes mysteries; novels and films and those point-and-click puzzle games that always have the most annoyingly catchy music—but even that is something that makes him useful as Robin. All these little pieces of Tim that Bruce has collected fuse and sink into his stomach like cold lead.

“Bruce?” Tim questions, hesitant now. 

Bruce shakes his head, not really denying anything, just needing to make some kind of movement. “It’s nothing. I was just checking on you, I didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep.”

“Oh.” Is he smiling? Maybe? Trying to squash it down, but the warmth sneaking through anyway? “You should go to bed too. Alfred won’t be happy if he finds out you didn’t sleep.”

The ball of Tim in Bruce’s stomachs aches sharply. This kid. Jesus. Woken up in the middle of the night and this kid is still trying too hard to look out for Bruce when Bruce is supposed to be looking out for him. 

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s not that Bruce needs to treat him more like a kid—not just that anyway—but that Tim has been looking out for himself so long he’s forgotten that he is one. 

_Really, Bruce, I’m fine on my own. You don’t have to—to feel responsible for me or anything._

But he does. _Someone_ has to. And Bruce is suddenly, painfully, heart-wrenchingly aware that there isn’t anyone else who is going to do it. Alfred, sure, there’s always Alfred, but he’s done enough stepping up to fix Bruce’s mistakes. Mistakes that there will no doubt be plenty more of. Alfred needs to be there for when Bruce inevitably fucks up, a second shoulder to lean on, the way he was for Dick and Jay. 

Instinct had driven Bruce to seek Tim and out bring him back to the manor tonight, but he knows better than to think that he’s going to be able to muddle through this on instinct alone. It’s late though. Tim has school tomorrow and Bruce—Bruce still needs to figure out what the hell he’s doing. Not raising another kid, not really, but—something. Something like that.

In the morning, he promises himself, there will be plenty of time to figure it out in the morning. He might even call Clark; he was always so good at listening when Bruce didn’t know how to talk about problems with Dick or Jason, no reason he wouldn’t be just as good at it when it’s Tim.

Tim yawns, trying to hide it. It makes Bruce yawn himself and he huffs an amused breath. It’s late. They should both be sleeping. 

“Goodnight, Tim,” he says quietly, lacing it with everything he isn't sure how to say yet, isn't sure whether he even should say. “Sleep well.”

Tim lies back down, bedcovers muffling his voice when he replies. “Night, Bruce.”

Bruce closes the door and steps away, but he lingers there for another long moment before he can bring himself to really leave. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr is [here](https://renecdote.tumblr.com/)


End file.
